Before i drop my bombs, you should know that i'm very skeptical when it comes to games. There are so few games i really love, and almost every game has some features i dislike.

This game however surprised me with its intuitiveness, fluid controls, and the mindblowing pixel art. The music is exceptionally good, and the general grimdark theme really works for me. I generally tend to let out some feelings when i play, and its not uncommon to hear my roar when a game takes me with itself, but when my wife had to come downstairs to calm me down after 4 hours of constant battlecries, cheers and laughing i'd say this game successfully pushed my buttons. To make it simple, i loved the way games used to _feel_. This game hits me where it hurts. It's beautiful in its themes, it has excellent couch co-op capabilities (i'm looking at you Larsto), it's never the same and it has a HUGE replay value as most roguelikes do. And oh boy, did i like the first time i swung my broadsword so hard that it took 2 orc heads with one swing. That being said, naturally i cried like a little "witch" when that guy took all of my money in 21 horsemen. for the 5th freaking time!

What more can i ask? Lamentations of their women? That's about it. Try it guys. You wont be disappointed!

This small game is PURE GEM! Gonna put you straight back into 80s and the childhood! If you remember Rastan Saga, Moonstone and Barbarian, this one will rock your pants! PS. pixelart & animations are great too, GG devs!

Recieved a review copy of this game and sat down to try it out. I was surprised to see that i stayed to play through the campaign in one sitting! I'ts not the largest feature filled rogue-like out there. But it has maybe the best pixel graphics and authentic sound. Also it has tight controls!

Thy Sword is very well thought out, good tutorial, great feeling of progression, the villages / stores are supporting the game nicely, there's even a little Blackjack minigame, where I keep losing my hard earned coins. The levels are one screeners, but those are randomly generated to a degree so there is not much repetition. Also new enemies are presented often, and unique boss fights too.

The game is very hard, as it should be. At least for me the retry button is becoming familiar. It's borderline too unforgiving time to time, but I haven't been too frustrated just yet.

Soundtrack is great, love the coin-op nuances and gotta say I don't believe it's possible to create better pixel gfx. The atmosphere is pretty much perfect and the level of detail is ridiculous! Controls are very responsive, which is super important in a game like this.

One improvement idea: For kb players like me the jumping control could be in the up arrow. I understand the need for separate jump button, but I believe it could be done and it would be more intuitive. This is absolutely not a big deal, but took some time to get used to the jumping while playing with kb.

So, what we have here is essentially a game which is essentially a pastiche of a bunch of Amiga era fantasy games. The graphics are authentic and the music plays as catchy as its' late 80's chiptune influences, without forgetting the main inspiration for a huge library of fantasy games, 1982:s Conan the Barbarian.

The mechanics and controls are the main point why this is a better alternative to playing the real classics with an emulator. The control scheme is very modern, although using the trigger as a sword hit both needs getting used to and feels natural to someone who is used to using the trigger as an attack.

The point why you should buy this game over any other retro title is in its' combination of authentic arcade execution and modern mechanics, which doesn't give you the arcade experience you actually had, but a nice and comfortable experience you remember.

Wow, this game! .I feel like I'm playing the lovechild of Barbarian and Rastan. This is a downright awesome experience! If you grew up in the 80's, in an arcade, or owned an old school console, C64, or an Amiga 500 do yourself a favor and buy this game right now. Remember the way games USED to play?

Can't believe this game doesn't have more reviews. This is a falling GEM passing through Steams giant waterfall of non stop turds !!!! Catch it and caress it. Place it in a vault. Thank me later.

Oh and don't think of starting the game without enabling the CRT mode in the options.

So, first off, to get it out of the way - for the price point this is a pretty short one all in all. If it were a little closer to $5 I think it'd be more fitting what most people expect..

Despite that I'm gonna give it a thumbs up, with a few caveats, but an overall positive expression.

The aesthetic is pretty solid - they have a solid and consistent pixel style, it's a pretty extra-old grungy early PC-era days look, but it works, and they run with it. The controls cooperated pretty well - the only issue was a little bit of sluggish response time when too much is on screen at once - oddly this didn't seem to affect frames, just movement/input, so may be a weird engine/code thing.

I didn't really experience any major bugs - one of the boss fights was a bit weird and I posted in the discussions to which the devs responded, acknowledged, and adjusted a bit, so that's always nice to see.

I could see it being beatable in a couple hours or taking a bit more if you especially want to unlock the couple different characters - which ultimately play pretty similarly but seem to have different starting loadouts more than anything - or do the more challenging no-credits/continues mode.

All in all it's a relatively simple and straightforward single-screen-per-level-based slasher. The thing that stood out most was the variety of enemies through the levels, they kept adding a new enemy every couple levels pretty consistently throughout, which does a good job keeping you on your toes.